convergence
by kincaidian
Summary: Nagato was the only one who didn't laugh when Yahiko told them, I was born an orphan. Yahiko, Nagato friendship, gen.


A/N: Written for the 'forced to hurt somebody' prompt at hc_bingo on LJ.

* * *

It was his father who first said, "Good thing there's so much rain, eh? Hides all the crying." They'd been gathered around the fire, staring into bland, soggy bowls of noodles, Yahiko sitting as close to his dad as he could possibly get. He remembers being surprised at the words, the clear implication of an _absence_ of rain; at four years old, it seemed on par with an _absence_ of sky, an _absence_ of night.

His dad died a week later facing Kiri shinobi, and Yahiko ran away from his youngest uncle's house and its lingering traces of grief as soon as he knew, straight into the needle-sharp rain.

Nagato wasn't like that. Whereas Konan scoffed and called him an idiot when Yahiko said with certainty, _I was born an orphan, _Nagato looked up at him with scared eyes, scared eyes that _understood. _Maybe Nagato hadn't hurtled full-tilt into the rain like him, but he recognized how much Yahiko defied it and accepted it, wanted to wipe it out. _I'm gonna stop the war one day, _Yahiko exulted to anyone who cared to listen, and Nagato had always been the one to look meaningfully at the skies. Once upon a time.

"Just do it," Nagato whispers. There are rivulets running down his thin face, over the sharp cuts of his cheekbones.

Yahiko had known better than to mistake tears for rain since he was four years old. He looks up at his best friend now, at the slender, yielding line of his body against Yahiko's sword, the set of his jaw.

"Yahiko," he says, voice thin but firm, brooking no argument. "You and Konan, you've got to stay alive. You're the savior of the world."

Yahiko looks down at the sword in his hand, angled directly towards Nagato's heart. He then looks at the chakra strings on his arms, thick and rope-like. There are matching ones on his ankles, controlling his movements. _Analyze your predicament, boy, _Jiraiya-sensei drawls, in the corner of his mind unaffected by blind, billowing panic.

_Puppet-master, _the enemy shinobi had hissed with a grimace, his hands outstretched in a virtual embrace towards Yahiko. _Bet you've never seen one of us before, Ame. _

Yahiko hadn't, and Nagato hadn't. An encounter with Suna shinobi wasn't something either of them had been prepared for. They'd taken five of the eight-man team down before Yahiko realized that the enemy's battle formation meant that the three left standing were the long-range fighters.

Water based jutsu's were a moot point in the council, which was deep enough underground that even the blood and rain couldn't reach through the soil towards it. Yahiko had barely decided that his best bet was to conserve chakra and back Nagato up before he saw the flash of red hair and Akatsuki robes, and Nagato was shouting _cover me, Yahiko. _

Nagato made seals so fast his hands blurred, and Yahiko was viciously _proud_ of the way the Suna shinobi's eyes widened as they failed to track his movements. The Wind style jutsu Nagato hit them with next would have –should have- knocked them back all the way to Fire country, had not one of the kunoichi whipped out what looked like an enormous fan and swept the whole thing away.

Yahiko swore, but Nagato was making more seals, his eyes utterly focused, but then-

"I don't think you really want to do that."

Yahiko looked up at the second level of the labyrinthine archive, from where the voice dripped, thick and sticky like syrup. At the same time, he knew that-

What?

What had gone wrong?

Yahiko's legs had begun moving –at first haltingly, and then with confidence, but still not with his usual gait- towards Nagato against his will. Nagato's eyes held his, looking as wide and viscerally terrified as he felt.

And now here he was- supposedly one of the best shinobi of Amegakure to date, one of the infamous Akatsuki, ready to strike his best friend down at someone else's command.

Everything inside Yahiko shakes. It's fury, yes, black and dark and boiling, but the disappointment is almost as overwhelming.

Nagato's eyes are gentle. _Fight me back, _Yahiko screams, because only his limbs are out of his control, he still has his mind and his voice, and that should be enough to pull Nagato out of this nightmare. _Snap my bones, anything._

Nagato shakes his head. His crimson hair shifts, and falls into his face. "The damage would be too much," he's trying to sound brave. He's trying to sound like _him, _Yahiko realizes with a sickening lurch of his stomach. "I can't…I can't control what happens."

Yahiko knows what he's saying; Nagato's close-range attacks were brutal, spontaneous. He'd melt the flesh off Yahiko's body.

But: the irrefutable fact of _Yahiko's_ sword against _Nagato's_ heart persisted.

Yahiko barely pauses. _That's what _you_ think, Nagato. Let me tell you what _I _think._ His hand twitched, but he rigorously held it in place, even yanked it back a tenth of an inch. _I think you're going to be the strongest shinobi in the world one day. You and I –we'll both be gods, and we'll stop the rain together. _

"Enough blabbering," the puppet master barks.

Nagato's eyes have gone wide, wondrous, like he sees Yahiko as something beyond human already. _But you'll still be my runt of a best friend who cries when he gets a paper cut. _

Yahiko tries to grin reassuringly.

The chakra strings jerk his hand forward, and Yahiko's sword drives through Nagato.

* * *

Time loops on a curve. It swirls around their feet, enigmatic and elusive as Yahiko reaches out clumsy hands still not fully under his control to catch Nagato's fall. For a moment and an eternity, he thinks it's all gone horribly wrong – that he _hadn't_ been able to divert the blow at the very last second, that it had gone through Nagato's heart after all.

_Calm down, _this time it's Konan. Yahiko wishes she was here, so badly, but this was supposed to be a routine mission and they couldn't spare their three best shinobi.

But she's not, and Jiraiya-sensei's not, and all Yahiko has apart from the rain is Nagato's hitching breath and Nagato's blood-colored hair fanning over his arms and Nagato's thin face and translucent skin. His mouth is curved crookedly with the tail-end of a smile.

_My comrades, _Nagato had said once, too shy to look at Konan and too nervous to indicate him, _are worth more than anything. I'd give anything to protect…you. _

Yahiko reaches out with his chakra and his knees nearly give out when it's hugged close by the answering chakra in his best friend's limp body; it shows him Nagato's good, pure heart, whole and pulsing rhythmically. His sword had missed all the vital organs. Never had Yahiko been more thankful of the post-Jiraiya medical training he'd had on a whim.

_Now, _he tells Nagato's shifting, swirling chakra, _now we're going to have some real fun with these Suna losers. _

"Well done," says the puppet master. "You used your will to break my chakra strings at the last minute. But with your strange-eyed friend gone, how will you take on all of us?"

_How, indeed. _Nagato's eyes are still closed, but his chakra hums, sensing Yahiko's question. His blood is pooling in Yahiko's hands, and his face is draining of what little color it had.

_The same way I will become a god. _

A smile traces over Nagato's lips.

_My comrades are worth more than anything. _


End file.
